Catalogue entry

Screenprint 19 1/2×14 1/8 (497 × 360), printed at Girdwood, published by the Wild Hawthorn Press in an edition of about 300
Not inscribed
Purchased from the artist (Grant-in-Aid) 1983

Text beneath the image indicates Finlay's idea of Apollo with Daphne being engulfed by a green camouflage smock: ‘APOLLO AND DAPHNE/ after Bernini/BIBLIOGRAPHY - Ovid, “Metamorphoses”; Rudolf Wittkower, “The Sculptures of Gian Lorenzo Bernini”; Historical Research Unit, Vol. 6, “Uniforms of the SS”’. In conversation with the compiler the artist mentioned that in the story of Apollo and Daphne the gods and nature ‘were behaving not unlike the Waffen SS’ (who were the first to use a smock with a leaf camouflage pattern, hence its identification with them). This image, in which Daphne is wearing a camouflage smock which replaces ‘nature’, was used as the poster for the exhibition ‘Ian Hamilton Finlay: Collaborations’ at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, 1977.